A Forgotten Episode
by Tam Lynne
Summary: Not even the most tormented genius in literature is immune to writer's block . . .


Disclaimer: No, of course they're not mine.  If they were, would I abuse them so?  Well, yes, probably.  Damn those evil plotbunnies . . . 

Christine and Raoul were engaged.  Of course, it was supposed to be a 'secret' engagement, but when Christine suddenly sprouted a diamond twice the size of her thumb, questions started getting asked.

            Meg, of course, was the most forthright about it.  The first day she saw Christine sporting her new piece of jewelry while practicing on stage, she marched right up to her and demanded, "Why are you wearing a gigantic rock on your finger?" 

            "It's an engagement ring," sang Christine proudly, then stopped and put a hand up to her mouth, her eyes wide.  "Er . . . I mean, it's a ring that I, um, found.  I found it.  And I put it on.  And it's to . . . remind me of when I have engagements.  That's what I mean."

            Meg eyed her skeptically.  "Sure.  And the tooth fairy comes to put money under my pillow whenever I lose a molar, too."

            "Well, of course it does!" cried Christine, looking shocked that anyone might doubt the existence of the tooth fairy.

            Meg sighed and shook her head.  "Okay, you go on spreading that story.  And be careful with that rock.  Knowing you, you'll accidentally drop it down the toilet, and with the size of that thing it'll clog up the drains more than the Phantom's spare mask did . . ."  

            "I'll be careful," Christine sang blithely.  

            "I'm sure," muttered Meg.

            Christine had not gone two steps before a swarm of ballet rats was on her, demanding to know what she wanted for an engagement present.  The Opera stage was, after all, built for acoustics.

After that, it wasn't too long before the little dancer Jammes heard a mysterious voice in her room in the middle of the night.  "So," it said, in deep, impressively Phantomlike tones, "I hear there's news about Christine and Raoul?"

Jammes considered screaming, but the prospect of telling the news to someone who hadn't already heard it was even more appealing than being known as The Ballet Girl Who Heard The Phantom – and anyways, she could always scream later, if that got boring.  Instead, she sat up straight and leaned conspiratorially towards her mirror.  "You mean you haven't _heard_?" she squeaked happily.  "But utterly _everyone _knows, it's the most _adorable _thing, Raoul bought her an _enormous _diamond and everything, and they keep bickering about the wedding date when they think we can't hear, it's the _cutest thing ever_!"  As she spoke, she bounced up and down on her bed excitedly.

"Please stop that," said the Phantom coldly.  "The bedsprings emit supersonic sounds that injure my ears."

Jammes sighed.  "All right, but I have to tell you, I think best when I'm bouncing."

"Considering your recent demonstration of 'good thinking'," said the voice of the Phantom, "that is truly frightening to hear."

Jammes chose to ignore this comment.  "Hey!" she said suddenly.  "I've just had the _bestest_ idea.  Why don't you go halfsies with me on an engagement present?  I mean, _you _know Christine really well and all, don't you?  And I haven't the _faintest _idea of what to get her –I saw Raoul eyeing Firmin's spare dresses, so maybe I could get _him _a new gown, but they can't really share that, I don't think they have the same taste in clothes, so it doesn't make a very good wedding present, does it, so maybe something more along the lines of a toastrack?  Christine likes toast, doesn't she?"  She paused expectantly.  "Well?"  But she was speaking to empty air; the Phantom was, apparently, gone.  "Darn it!" said Jammes, in irritation.  "And I never even got to scream!"

Erik, the Opera Ghost, had in fact retired to his lair immediately after his complaint about the bedsprings, and was now sitting at his piano, brooding.  He brooded a lot.  He fancied that he was quite good at it.  Sometimes he almost enjoyed it.  Today, however, he actually had something quite unpleasant to brood about – Christine's engagement.  This was the sort of thing usually caused him to express his feelings through elaborate performance art involving falling scenery and flying chandeliers.   However, the thought of Raoul running off with Christine would require something considerably more drastic to calm him down.  There was going to be a small cast party after the closing of _The Magic Flute_ tomorrow, and, Eric decided, that would be an excellent time to reassert his presence in the Opera – and with Christine.

The cast party the next evening started well.  La Sorelli had talked Philippe de Chagny into paying for a decent band, the wine was flowing, and, best of all, Piangi had made his signature spinach-feta dip. 

"You dance pretty well," said a surprised Meg to her dancing partner, as they glided about the floor.

"Well," said Firmin bashfully, "I did spend a few years with the corps de ballet."

"Ow!" said André to Madame Giry, rubbing the shin she had just skillfully kicked.  "What was that for?

Madame Giry glared at him balefully.  "That was a warning.  Step on my foot once more, and a disaster beyond your imagination will occur!"

André muttered something under his breath that sounded awfully like "bloody melodramatic plagiarist", but it was noted that he was much more careful with his feet after that. 

"So," said Raoul conversationally to Christine, after the fifteenth person had come up to congratulate them on their upcoming nuptials, "the whole 'secret engagement' thing, that's off, then?"

"Oh, no!" trilled Christine, horrified.  "No, no, it must be _totally _secret until the time is right.  _No one _must know."

"Oh, hey, Christine," said the third trombone, walking by, "I was talking with the orchestra, and we were all wondering – when's the wedding shower going to be?"

"Ask Meg, she's planning it," sang Christine, then turned to Raoul and hissed, "Remember, no one must know!"

"Ubaldo," demanded Carlotta, dancing energetically with Piangi, "vhen are _ve _going to be married?"

"Actually, mia carissima," said Piangi, stomping heavily in time to the music, "I vant to talk vit you about zis.  I have just today received a letter from some person in America, who says he vould like to turn our married life into a reality show he vishes to call 'Newlyweds: Supersized.'"  He executed an elaborate pirouette.

Reyer, dancing nearby with La Sorelli, frowned.  "Why is the floor shaking?"

La Sorelli was spared from having to answer, since, at that moment, a trapdoor opened in the floor and the Phantom rose out of it in what was intended to be a dramatic entrance.  Unfortunately, the refreshments table barred his way. 

"My spinach-feta dip!" wailed Piangi.

"My _dress_!" cried Jammes, who had had the misfortune to be standing next to the table when the Phantom made his less-than-elegant arrival.  She rounded on the Phantom, who was attempting to brush dollops of spinach-feta dip off of his black cloak.  "This will stain forever and ever and ever, you – you brute!  I didn't believe all the stories about you before, but you're _just _as terrible as they all said!"  She started hitting his arm with tiny clenched fists.

Erik gave her a cold look.  "Would someone please remove this small squeaky cat toy of a child, please?" he demanded of the room at large.

Jammes gasped in indignation and prepared to renew her onslaught.  Fortunately for Erik, Meg, with great presence of mind, pulled out a red scarf and tied it rapidly over Jammes' arm.  Raoul came running, grabbed the struggling Jammes, and carried her back over to where he had been standing with Christine.  Meg grinned, justifiably proud of herself, and mouthed "You owe me" to Erik.  However, the Phantom didn't notice, all his attention at the moment being taken up with Christine.

"Christine," he said gently, "I'm not very pleased with you."

"Oh dear," said Christine faintly.

"I am upset," continued Erik, "distraught, distressed, troubled, and utterly beside myself at the news I hear.  Have you forgotten me so much already?  Are you really planning to _marry _this – this scarf-fetching lapdog?"

Christine bit her lip.  "You know, Erik, I know you're a cat person, but really, canines aren't so terrible –"

"That's not the point!" roared Erik.  By this point, even Jammes had fallen silent, fascinated by the scene that was taking place.  "It is time for me to reassert my presence in this opera!  And, to that end –"  He raised his arms dramatically in the air.  "You shall perform for me an opera!"

There was quiet for a moment.  Then the first bassoon piped up, "But, Monsieur Phantom, sir, we're an opera house . . . we kind of already do perform operas.  In case you hadn't noticed or anything."

Erik fumed, and made a mental note to get rid of the first bassoon as soon as possible.  "What I _meant,_" he snapped, "is that you will perform an opera that I have _written_."  

"Oh," said Christine eagerly, quite forgetting she was supposed to be being chastised, "_Don Juan Triumphant,_ is it?  That's what I saw on your music stand – it sounded perfectly lovely . . ."

"Um," said Erik, the wind rather taken out of his sails.  "No, Christine, we will not be doing _Don Juan Triumphant_."

"Why not?" asked La Sorelli plaintively.  "I _like _the story of Don Juan.  Lots of good female roles, and heaven knows with Carlotta and Christine around no one else usually gets a decent part –"

"Yes, it's a good, crowd-pleasing tale," added Firmin, "filled with sex, blood and violence – just what your average opera-goer craves."

"Look," said Erik, quite exasperated, "we can't do _Don Juan Triumphant,_ if you must know, because – because – well, because it's not quite finished yet."

Several pairs of eyes blinked.  "Not finished yet?" echoed Madame Giry.

"Well," said Erik defensively, "I mean, I'm only human.  I get writer's block, just like anyone else.  And I've been stuck on this one scene for ages – it's terrible, I just can't seem to get past it.  You have no idea, the hours I've sat staring at my piano, hoping for some sort of inspiration, divine guidance so that I may finish my masterwork - the days spent drinking caffeine and disconsolately munching cheap snacks while trying to get past this scene that ought to have been just a little snag – it's torture, I tell you, sheer torture!"  Quite overcome, he banged his fist down on the overturned refreshment table for emphasis.  There was a brief moment of silence, as the entire company stared, wide-eyed, at the distraught Phantom.  Erik, slowly regaining control of himself, gave an uneasy cough.

"Well," he said awkwardly.  "In any case.  We won't be doing _Don Juan Triumphant._  What I was intending to do was offer you a selection from some of the other works that I've been doing in the meantime, while work on the original piece was temporarily stalled.  If you will please attend?"  He pulled a sheaf of papers out of one black-clad sleeve and coughed again, this time professorially.  "The first option is entitled _The Epic and Tragic Tale of Winnie the Pooh, _dealing with the trials of a small teddy bear who fears that he has lost his jar of honey.  Christine would be cast as Winnie, and Meg Giry would be given the role of Piglet –"

"A teddy bear?" said Christine, furrowing her brow.

"_Piglet_?" said Meg.

"I assure you," began Erik, "that the role of Piglet is a remarkably fulfilling one, and has a great many solos –"

"Where's the romance?" demanded Firmin, interrupting.  "Where's the bloodshed, the tragedy?  This is opera!  It's not opera unless someone dies, usually in an extremely convoluted fashion, and drags their beloved down with them into the dark depths of hell!"

"Winnie," said Erik coldly, "is very attached to his jar of honey.  But if you're all going to be so close-minded about it . . . the second option is a lighter operetta I've tentatively titled _The Ballerinas of Penzance_, in which a young girl, played by Christine, apprenticed to a troupe of sailing ballerinas, lead by the dreaded Carlotta, who plan to descend upon the peaceful town of Penzance, discovers through an ironic twist of fate that she is trapped in this dreaded career because of –"

"Um, excuse me," said the third trombone, "but how exactly is this going to work?  I know you're fond of Christine – in fact, scarily so – but it's already been pretty well proven that she dances worse than a drunken hippopotamus.  Why do you think they kicked her out of the ballet troupe and into a singing role in the first place?"

"Her talent, I would assume," snapped Erik, making another mental note: the third trombone would also have to go.

"It's true, you know," said Meg.  "Christine is _terrible_.  We used to call her 'the Terrible Slayer of Feet.'"

Christine pouted.  "Why can't the past just die?" she demanded.

"All right, all right!" said Erik, shuffling frantically through his papers.  "Well, there's one more option, then – it's called _A Tedious Brief Scene of Pyramus and his Love Thisbe, Most Tragedical Mirth_.  It's a sort of Romeo and Juliet tale –"

"Plagiarist!" howled Andre, whose shin was hurting terribly and who had been longing to shout at somebody all night.  Erik was a great deal less threatening than Madame Giry in a temper.  "Bloody plagiarist!  You stole that from Shakespeare's _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, and you know it!"

"We can't do that!" cried Firmin, horrified, visions of suited lawyers dancing like sugar plums in his mind.

"And zere is not even any singing in it!" snapped Carlotta.  

The third trombone nudged the second trombone and murmured, "The no singing one gets my vote."

"If there's no singing," muttered the second trombonist, "we're out of a job, you bloody idiot."

"Look," said Meg reasonably, "Obviously, we can't do any of the things you've suggested, but everyone seems to like the idea of this _Don Juan _thing, right?  So why don't you just run back along to your underground lair and get cracking on that, come back to harass us again in a few month's time, and we'll just forget all of this ever happened?  Christine won't mind holding off the wedding a couple of months, will she?"

"What wedding?" said Christine, still clinging bravely to the 'secret engagement' plan.  "There is no wedding!"

"Good," said Meg.  "Then there can not-be a wedding for three more months, yes?  There's supposed to be a Masquerade ball, I think.  You can do all your special effects then.  But you don't have much time, so you'd better get cracking!"

Erik threw his hands up in the air in disgust.  "All right, all right!" he said.  "Since you're all so narrow-minded, I suppose I don't really have a choice!"  He clambered back into his trapdoor, slamming it petulantly shut behind him.  Then it slammed open again.  "And I'm sending Piangi the dry-cleaning bill!" Erik shouted, before disappearing again into the dark depths of the Opera.

There was a mutual consensus by everyone involved that that night was better forgotten, and indeed, they all tried their hardest to erase it from their memory.  The Phantom returned, three months later, _Don Juan Triumphant _in hand, and all continued as normal – for everyone, that is, except the unfortunate first bassoon and third trombone . . .  __


End file.
